Not all of us can be like Sir John Bowring, the British statesman who could read 200 languages and speak a hundred; few of us share American Vice-President Dan Quayle's regret, prior to a trip to Latin America, of not having studied Latin at school. Most of us stand somewhere in between, wishing we could decipher a menu in a Chinese restaurant in Beijing, or pour sweet nothings into a Norwegian ear in Oslo.
